Trans-placental Transport

The placenta is a special organ developing and growing side by side with the baby, and it transports all nutrients and oxygen needed for the baby’s growth. However, it is not perfect and certain drugs, or environmental agents, or infectious pathogens which are all detrimental to the baby’s development, can sometimes cross the placenta, too.

The placenta is delivered at the time of babies’ birth and thereafter it is usually considered hospital waste. We, however, consider it a very powerful research tool. Placental ex-vivo perfusion maintains placenta viable and functional for a few hours after birth, and can be used to study transport of both necessary nutrients, but also unwanted compounds (e.g. medications, pollutants). This allows us to investigate what affects baby’s growth and development inside the womb.

Lipid Transfer Studies

Lipids and fatty acids are essential building blocks for many cellular processes and provide energy to virtually all human cells. As placenta transports all necessary nutrients from mother to fetus, and eventually also stores some of them, it is interesting to investigate how this transport function is carried out on a molecular level. Obesity and diabetes in pregnancy become more prevalent in the general population, and children from obese and diabetic mothers are more prone to develop diabetes or become obese as well, which might start a vicious cycle that could potentiate for generations.

Therefore, it is of utmost interest to study nutrient transport and placental metabolism and how it impacts fetal growth and development. In such studies, we combine ex vivo perfusion with in silico data modeling and relate our findings to maternal and fetal clinical parameters. This broadens our understanding what factors protect the fetus from a metabolic environment which is not ideal.

Hirschmugl B, Perazzolo S, Sengers BG, Lewis RM, Gruber M, Desoye G, Wadsack C. Placental mobilization of free fatty acids contributes to altered materno-fetal transfer in obesity. Int J Obes (Lond). 2021 May;45(5):1114-1123. doi: 10.1038/s41366-021-00781-x. Epub 2021 Feb 26. PMID: 33637949; PMCID: PMC8081658.

Perazzolo S, Hirschmugl B, Wadsack C, Desoye G, Lewis RM, Sengers BG. The influence of placental metabolism on fatty acid transfer to the fetus. J Lipid Res. 2017 Feb;58(2):443-454. doi: 10.1194/jlr.P072355. Epub 2016 Dec 2. PMID: 27913585; PMCID: PMC5282960.

Hirschmugl B, Crozier S, Matthews N, Kitzinger E, Klymiuk I, Inskip HM, Harvey NC, Cooper C, Sibley CP, Glazier J, Wadsack C, Godfrey KM, Desoye G, Lewis RM. Relation of placental alkaline phosphatase expression in human term placenta with maternal and offspring fat mass. Int J Obes (Lond). 2018 Jun;42(6):1202-1210. doi: 10.1038/s41366-018-0136-8. Epub 2018 Jun 13. PMID: 29899523; PMCID: PMC6173293.

Contracted Research

We also offer our time, facilities and experience with the ex vivo perfusion set-up to companies who want to test if pharmacological compounds are able to traverse the placenta. As placental architecture is highly specific for each species, commonly used rodent models will not always allow to properly predict if and how drugs cross the placenta. Here, ex vivo perfusion offers a powerful tool using human tissue and allows for better translation of the ex vivo wet-lab set-up to the in vivo situation in a pregnant patient.

If this method is of interest to you and your institution or company, please don’t hesitate to contact

Christian Wadsack - Teammitglied bei PlancentaLab

Christian Wadsack
PhD, PI

Hirschmugl B, Wadsack C. Transplacental transfer of venlafaxine evaluated by ex vivo perfusion. Placenta. 2022 Jan;117:150-153. doi: 10.1016/j.placenta.2021.12.007. Epub 2021 Dec 3. PMID: 34894602.